The City
by kavis
Summary: A young man searches for a treasure lost within the bustling heart and sordid shadows of NYC.  Little does he know, but he's about to become a pawn in a centuries old feud between the damned.  Set in the new WoD.  Please R&R and I will do the same.


AN: Well here goes, my first story in the WoD universe. The setting is New York City in the new WoD. I hope you enjoy and please remember to tell me what you think and leave a quick review. Feedback is what keeps me writing and I always return the favor :)

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Calvin jerked upright and opened his eyes. His body shook. His arms could barely hold him up in bed. Slowly he hugged his sides. The soggy wife beater he wore clung to his body like skin. His body was wracked and cold, but the fear gradually began to slip away. He'd been dreaming again. 

He'd had barely a weeks worth of interrupted sleep since he'd made the discovery of his life time. It still seemed like yesterday, even though it'd been six months. He had managed to chisel and squeeze his way into an old storeroom room beneath Grand Central Station. It wasn't too exciting at the time. Most of the stuff there had been uninteresting or useless. He still wasn't sure what inspired him to stuff a musty old tome into his bag and book it, but it had changed everything.

He had inadvertently come across one of the most sought after and fabled items of the urban underground, _On the Orinoco_. For decades rogue scholars, languishing intellectuals, mystic occultists, obscure historians, jittery conspiracy theorists, and intrepid urban explorers much like Calvin Duress had traded tales of some kind of trove hidden deep within the core of New York City. Calvin was new to the scene and had only heard vague rumors and passing whispers. He never dreamt that he'd find anything beyond mere trinkets and peculiarities. And he didn't, the book found him.

Calvin slid his feet from beneath the haggard blankets on his bed. The wood floor was cold to his bare skin and it chilled him to the bone.

This dream had been different. It was clearer, much unlike the usual haunts which seemed to be merely a jumble of frightening images and sensations. Calvin tried to remember.

He had been in a dark room, the only light being provided by a hand lit candle. The walls were made of crumbling brick and there seemed to be no way out. In the center of the room was a granite vault. The lid had been slid off and rested against the side. Something told Calvin not to go near, but his curiosity had always brushed aside his reason. The vault was filled with some kind of thick liquid. As Calvin tried to figure out what it was, it began to bubble. The bubbling liquid rose. Then, in a moment of clarity it became very clear what it was; blood. That was when Calvin woke up.

He checked the clock by his bedside. The red geometric numerals read **11:34**. It was almost time to get going anyway. He was meeting Sara at 12:30 and the alarm was set to go off in ten minutes. Calvin reached over to turn it off and then set his mind to shaking off the dream and getting dressed.

He thought about opening the blinds on his windows to let the glow of the city travel inside but decided against it. He'd suspected that someone had been watching him for the past few weeks and didn't want them to know that he was going out. Of course he'd never found any conclusive evidence to suggest that someone was indeed keeping an eye on him, but he could feel it in his gut.

So Calvin got dressed in the dark. He was used to it. He didn't need to find much anyway; just a pair of jeans and a black leather belt to hold them up, a plain white v-neck tee, and a well worn navy hoodie. He'd stopped caring about trying to look nice for Sara almost as soon as they'd started working together.

When Calvin got around to taking a look at _On the Orinoco_ a few days after it'd come into his possession he was both intrigued and baffled. The book had no distinguishable author and essentially seemed to be a collection of tales and journal entries detailing both strange happenings on the Orinoco river in South America and what the locals believed to be responsible; some kind of object of great power. Unfortunately large parts of the text were damaged and illegible and a good deal of what was legible was written in Spanish. Calvin had taken Latin in high school in hopes of improving his verbal SAT scores. Unfortunately knowing a dead language didn't come in too useful in practical situations.

His interest piqued, Calvin put out an ad for a translator with a strong background in Latin American history and culture and a little description of the project he had in mind. He got a call the next evening which he still remembered distinctly.

"I believe you have something I'm interested in," was the first thing the woman on the other line had said. Her voice was cool and calming. The syllables were enunciated to the utmost effect. Her name was Sara Calbraith.

After a few minutes of chit chat the two decided to get together and collaborate. Calvin was skeptical at first, but she sounded hot and in his twenty three year old mind that was more important than any kind of actual academic qualification.

A few days later they met in a faint coffee shop downtown. As soon as Sara set eyes on _Orinoco_ she knew exactly what it was. That's when the nightmare began. She told Calvin what he'd come upon and what many believed it led to. There were a multitude of theories, too many to name, and all of them were based on nothing but superstition and elaborate guesswork. All anybody knew for sure was that _On the Orinoco_ was the key to finding something that had been lost for centuries, something spectacular.

This is how they'd been working for the past half year. Sara would pour over _Orinoco_ and anytime she managed to decipher or make sense of something she'd follow it as far as she could. If she needed any kind of book or manuscript she'd send Calvin to acquire it. Sometimes it was as easy as a trip to the library, but there were also occasions where he'd had to resort to breaking and entering and theft. In Calvin's mind the ends justified the means.

So far they hadn't got very far. Bits and pieces seemed to be falling into place, but most leads eventually ran cold. Nevertheless they kept trying and they kept searching. The book seemed to have as much of a hold over Sara as it did Calvin.

Calvin took a quick stroll to the bathroom. He could afford to turn on a light there, so he did. A sunken pair of eyes stared at him from the mirror. They weren't his.

Calvin's eyes were bright, full of youth, happy. The ones he saw before him barely clung to life. The only thing they showed was determination and maybe a smattering of thin hope. Yet there they rested, in his eye sockets.

He turned the squeaky faucet and ran his hands underneath. The warm water helped to steady them. They were still shaking from the dream. He brought the withered hands to his face. The droplets ran down his paling skin and through the bristly shadows across his jaw and cheeks. They made him feel somewhat more alive.

Calvin's brown shoulder length hair was a mess. It always was. He hadn't had time for a haircut in god knows how long. There was a crafted headband on top of the medicine cabinet. Calvin put it on to keep his wavy locks from falling across his face.

Satisfied, Calvin went to the door. He'd grab a bite to eat on the way. He slid his feet into a brown worn out pair of Nike dunks, unbolted the locks on his door, and slipped from the safety of his apartment to the darkness of the night.


End file.
